Demolishing or recycling

For the last months a demolition project made me adjust my route
to work so I can see the daily progress.

A row of houses on two sides of a road in Utrecht is being demolished
to be replaced by modern houses. The houses look like they are from
before 1940 but I am not sure about that. Separate doors for the
upper and lower houses.

At first the deterioration of the houses was postponed as much as
possible. Curtains where left in, giving the houses the look of
being lived in up until the moment that fences were put up around
them.

It is interesting to see how modern 'demolition' is in fact a
complete recycling work. A big crane, perfectly capable of making
one of these houses dissapear by driving through it does the work.
But, bits and pieces are removed, separating wooden beams and wooden
windowframes from metal (heating, pipes) and any stone (the walls).

The wooden floors are actually removed as a whole and people remove the
nails (!).

I took some pictures of this whole process.

In the first picture a garden shed is taken apart. Someone's pride
and joy which took years to perfect (probably) is carefully separated
in concrete blocks and wood.

In the third picture, a wooden beam (part of a windowframe) gets removed.
The crane uses its very controlled power to just grip the beam and remove it.

The work is done by Van Vliet Sloopwerken.